- This article describes Osamu Yamanami from Space Battleship Yamato 2199 and its sequels. For his counterpart in Be Forever Yamato, see Osamu Yamanami (OS).
Captain Osamu Yamanami is a flag officer serving as the Supreme Commander of the Earth Federation Cosmo Navy. Late in the Garmillas War, he commanded the space battleship Kirishima, flagship of the Combined Cosmo Fleet, and more than three years later, he became the captain of the experimental warship Andromeda and the commander of the Earth Federation Cosmo Fleet during the Gatlantis War.
History[]
Early Life[]
At the National Space Defense Academy, Yamanami became a classmate and longtime friend of Shuntaro Yasuda. The two men served together as officers in the Second Inner Planet War.[2]
2199: Garmillas-Earth War[]
Yamanami captains Kirishima as the flagship of Admiral Juzo Okita during Operation M. Near the end of the battle, Yamanami solemnly carries out the admiral's order for the flagship to maintain course and speed away from the enemy Garmillas fleet as the destroyer Yukikaze is sacrificed to cover Kirishima's retreat ("Messenger of Iscandar").
Saluting Yamato as it leaves Earth orbit.
A little more than three weeks later, Yamanami stands on the Kirishima bridge alongside Admiral Ryu Hijikata and the ship's bridge crew to salute the new space battleship Yamato and Admiral Okita as they depart Earth orbit on their mission to save Earth ("Escape the Jupiter Zone"). Immediately afterward, he takes the ship to the Moon to rescue a stranded contingent of United Nations Cosmo Marines. When the ranking Marine survivor, Sergeant Hajime Saito, barges onto the bridge and loudly demands to speak with the captain, Yamanami informs Saito with a smile that he is the captain and that Saito has mistakenly been yelling at the top UNCN commander, Admiral Hijikata. As Saito's rant continues, Yamanami subtly warns him to restrain himself (Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark).
2202-2203: Gatlantis-Earth War[]
Standing in command of Andromeda.
Yamanami is given command of Andromeda, the first in a more advanced class of warships. At the 8th Floating Continent Recapture Operation, he carries out orders from UNCF central command to fire Andromeda's wave motion guns and obliterates nearly the entire Gatlantis fleet, saving beleaguered Earth and Garmillas forces. He instructs the survivors to hold position while Andromeda moves to finish off the remaining hostiles. One damaged Gatlantean ship suddenly reactivates and races away from the site of battle, and although Yamanami responds immediately and attempts to intercept, it is able to warp away ("AD 2202 - Revive, Space Battleship Yamato").
The captain is leading Andromeda, four other ships of its class, more than a dozen Dreadnought-class battleships, and fighter craft in a fleet fire exercise in the vicinity of Jupiter when he receives word that Yamato has been stolen by members of its former crew. After a number of fighter pilots abruptly break away to join them, Yamanami has the remaining pilots who had served aboard Yamato detained and orders other fighters to pursue the defectors. He takes Andromeda away from Jupiter to confront Yamato directly. He attempts to persuade the acting captain, Susumu Kodai, to stand down, and when Kodai refuses, he opens fire. Yamato is able to successfully defend itself, and as it escapes, Yamanami's anger with Kodai turns into grudging admiration, and he chooses not to follow. The director of the UNCF soon contacts Yamanami and Kodai with news that the Earth Federation president has authorized Yamato's mission. In response, Yamanami allows the detained pilots to leave, and sends a high relief sculpture of Admiral Okita hanging over his desk to Yamato as a gift ("Clash! Yamato vs. Andromeda").
Captain Yamanami leads UN forces into battle once again when Gatlantis mounts a massive invasion of the solar system at Saturn. Near the end of the battle, Andromeda suffers heavy damage and Yamanami is incapable of saving his ship, until the carrier Apollo Norm collides with it and uses up its own engines to push Andromeda to safety. Yamanami reacts with shock when the carrier's commanding officer, Captain Shuntaro Yasuda, informs Yamanami of his intention to sacrifice Apollo Norm, but Yamanami accepts the decision ("Battle off the Coast of Saturn - Gather the Wave Motion Gun Fleet!", "Yamato in Crisis - The Devil's Alternative Once More").
Once Andromeda is repaired and equipped with fully automated systems, Yamanami voices his opposition to launching the battleship and other newly modified ships of its class without any human control. His concerns are addressed, and one human captain is assigned to each vessel; Yamanami takes his station on the bridge of Andromeda in a reinforced spacesuit, to survive the lack of life support systems. During the Decisive Battle off Mars, Yamanami survives a direct strike on the bridge and multiple hits on his ship, and evades more enemy defenses as he takes Andromeda to the Gatlantis Ark of Destruction's gravity control center. The ship rendezvous with the space battleship Ginga and the captain fires its wave motion gun, amplified by Ginga's own wave motion shields. The gravity control center is destroyed, but Andromeda is eventually ripped apart by its own damaged and overtaxed systems. Yanamami is able to abandon ship, and rides to safety clutching the cockpit canopy of a Cosmo Zero fighter[3] ("Gatlantis, the Cursed Child", "Escape from the Nightmare!").
2203: War's Aftermath[]
Six months after the end of the war with Gatlantis, Yamanami works out of an office in a UNCF facility on Earth. He is approached by Lieutenant Commander Shiro Sanada, who suggests that Yuki Mori and Susumu Kodai, who were believed to have been killed in their attack on the last surviving component of the Ark of Destruction, were alive and trapped in a higher dimension. Despite his reservations over Sanada's argument, he is motivated by the chance to save more lives after the immense death and destruction of the war. Yamanami joins Sanada, Lieutenant Commander Saki Todo, and Ensign Akira Yamamoto in their meeting with senior leaders of the Earth Federation and the Garmillan ambassador to Earth to propose a plan that would rescue the two officers but collapse Earth's strategically important time fault in the process ("Earth, Yamato Is...").
Personality[]
Impressed with Okita's student.
Yamanami brings high degrees of optimism and skill to his military service, engendering trust from his superiors.[1] He shows no hesitation over the Earth Federation's decision to ignore Okita's treaty with Iscandar and to build an arsenal of ships armed with wave motion technology. He insists on military service members respecting authority, but he allows himself a measure of respect for those who violate protocol and orders to take a principled stand (Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark, "AD 2202 - Revive, Space Battleship Yamato", "Clash! Yamato vs. Andromeda"). As Gatlantis presses its advance through the solar system and humanity's drive to build larger and ever more powerful weapons to fight back brings only more death and destruction, Yamanami grows skeptical about Earth's policy of total war ("Escape from the Nightmare!").
Gallery[]
Notes[]
- Osamu Yamanami is the first "early appearance" in Yamato 2199, a character or situation that had not been shown in the original twenty-six episode series which ran from 1974 to 1975, but was introduced later in one of its sequels. However, Yamanami's appearance has been changed from Be Forever Yamato.